Parents of Hannah Warren, 2, relieved that their youngest daughter’s windpipe transplant was successful. Her new trachea was bioengineered from her own stem cells.

Hannah Warren, 2, is seen with her mother, Young-Mi, and her father, Darryl Warren, before her transplant surgery in April.
Hannah received a bioengineered organ, made of plastic fibres and human cells, at the Children's Hospital of Illinois.

Using plastic fibres and human cells, doctors have built and implanted a windpipe in a 2 ½-year-old girl Hannah Warren – the youngest person yet to receive a bioengineered organ.

Hannah’s parents are also breathing a little easier. Darryl Warren, of Paradise, N.L., wept tears of relief on Tuesday when the successful surgery was announced at the Children’s Hospital of Illinois.

“We desperately wanted to give Hannah this one chance, her only chance, to become a normal little girl and lead a healthy life,” he said in an interview. “So many stars needed to align for this to happen, and they all did, unbelievably.”

Warren, 36, met his wife, Young-Mi, in South Korea after he travelled there to teach English more than a decade ago. They also have a 4-year-old daughter, Dana.

In 2010, Hannah was born without a trachea, or windpipe, a rare and typically fatal congenital defect. She has been living in an intensive care unit in a Seoul hospital and breathing through a tube inserted into her mouth.

Hannah also could not eat, speak or smell. Doctors predicted she would die within months, unless she underwent an alternate surgical procedure that could extend her life for up to six years.

“We were in shock,” said Warren. “We didn’t want Hannah for six years. We wanted her for the rest of our lives.”

So the family’s search for a synthetic trachea began. Warren scoured the Internet, eventually finding Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, an Italian regenerative medicine specialist who had performed similar windpipe transplants on adults.

Warren also launched a donation website called “Help Hannah Breathe” and appeared on a Korean fundraising show. Hannah’s story captivated people in Newfoundland, Korea and across the globe, raising more than $35,000.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mark Holterman, a pediatric surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Illinois, learned of Hannah’s plight during a business trip to Korea.

Alongside chief surgeon Dr. Richard Pearl, he convinced the Peoria, Ill., hospital to bring Macchiarini to the U.S. to help perform the surgery.

Hannah’s surgery date finally arrived on Apr. 9. Warren’s mother, Genevieve, met her youngest granddaughter for the first time just days before the procedure.

“As I got closer to Hannah’s room, I nearly lost it. I think Darryl had to catch me from falling,” she recalled. “Just to see this little child, the way she was, with a tube coming out of her mouth . . . it was upsetting.”

Despite the fact that Macchiarini had only performed five similar procedures to date — the only five in the world — Warren said the family was “terrified, but confident” the day of the surgery.

After a gruelling 11 hours on the operating table, in which doctors also discovered a larynx they hadn’t known was there, the little girl awoke with a long road to recovery ahead.

Her first breath wasn’t easy. Hannah panicked, struggled to exhale and her heart rate skyrocketed. Doctors have put her on a ventilator while she learns how to breathe through her brand-new airway.

These complications aside, Warren said she is recovering well. She can’t speak yet, but she can smell and taste. For her first experience with taste, Hannah sucked on a chocolate lollipop.

“She was very lucky,” her dad said with a laugh. “Most babies experience only mashed up vegetables, peas and carrots.”

Doctors don’t yet know when Hannah will be able to leave the hospital, but the family is excited to take her home to Korea before hopefully moving back to the Maritimes someday.

“We can’t wait to take her home,” he said. “It will feel right. It will feel healthy. It will feel normal. We haven’t been able to feel right, healthy or normal since before she was born.”

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